Monday, August 28, 2006

Explorer of the Week, vol.6


Jean-François Galaup
was born near Albi, France. La Pérouse was the name of a family property which he added to his name. He studied in a Jesuit college, and entered the naval college in Brest when he was fifteen, and fought the British off North America in the Seven Years' War. In the beginning of the war he was wounded in a naval engagement off the French coast and was briefly imprisoned. He was promoted to rank of commodore when he defeated the English frigate Ariel in the West Indies. In August 1782 he made fame by capturing two English forts on the coast of the Hudson Bay, but left the survivors with food and ammunition when he departed.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Laperouse_1.jpg/180px-Laperouse_1.jpg

Scientific expedition

La Pérouse was appointed in 1785 to lead an expedition to the Pacific. His ships were the Astrolabe and the Boussole, both 500 tons. They were storeships, reclassified as frigates for the occasion. One of the men who applied for the voyage was a 16-year-old Corsican named Napoleon Bonaparte. He was a second lieutenant from Paris's military academy at the time. He made the preliminary list but he wasn't chosen for the final list and remained behind in France. The rest, regarding him, is history. La Pérouse was a great admirer of James Cook, tried to get on well with the Pacific islanders, and was well-liked by his men.

Alaska, Japan, and Russia

He left Brest on August 1, 1785, rounded Cape Horn, investigated the Spanish colonial government in Chile, and, by way of Easter Island(where he stayed for only two days) and Hawaii[, sailed on to Alaska, where he landed near Mount St. Elias in late June 1786 and explored the environs. Next he visited Monterey, arriving on September 14, 1786. He examined the Spanish settlements and made critical notes on the treatment of the Indians in the Franciscan missions.

The next year he set out for the northeast Asian coasts. He saw the island of Quelpart (Cheju), which had been visited by Europeans only once before when a group of Dutchmen shipwrecked there in 1635. He visited the mainland coast of Korea, then crossed over to Oku-Yeso (Sakhalin).

The inhabitants had drawn him a map, showing their country, Yeso (also Yezo, now called Hokkaido) and the coasts of Tartary (mainland Asia). La Pérouse wanted to sail through the channel between Sakhalin and Asia, but failed, so he turned south, and sailed through La Pérouse Strait (between Sakhalin and Hokkaido), where he met the Ainu, explored the Kuriles, and reached Petropavlovsk (on Kamchatka peninsula) on September 7, 1787. Here they rested from their trip, and enjoyed the hospitality of the Russians and Kamchatkans. In letters received from Paris he was ordered to investigate the settlement the British were to erect in New South Wales.

Pacific

His next stops were in the Navigator Islands (Samoa), on December 6, 1787. Just before he left, the Samoans attacked a group of his men, killing twelve of them, among which were Lamanon and de Langle, commander of the Astrolabe. Twenty men were wounded. The expedition continued to Tonga and then to Australia, arriving at Botany Bay on 26 January 1788. The British received him courteously, but were unable to help him with food as they had none to spare. La Pérouse sent his journals and letters to Europe with a British ship, the Sirius, obtained wood and fresh water, and left for New Caledonia, Santa Cruz, the Solomons, the Louisiades, and the western and southern coasts of Australia. Although he wrote that he expected to be back in France by June 1789, neither he nor any of his men was seen again.

Discovery of the expedition

On September 25, 1791, Rear Admiral Joseph Antoine Bruni d'Entrecasteaux departed Brest in search of La Pérouse. His expedition followed La Pérouse's proposed path through the islands northwest of Australia while at the same time making scientific and geographic discoveries. In May of 1793, he arrived at the island of Vanikoro, which is part of the Santa Cruz group of islands. d'Entrecasteaux thought he saw smoke signals from several elevated areas on the island, but was unable to investigate due to the dangerous reefs surrounding the island and had to leave. He died two months later.

It was not until 1826 that an Irish captain, Peter Dillon, found enough evidence to piece together the events of the tragedy. In Tikopia (one of the islands of Santa Cruz), he bought some swords he had reason to believe had belonged to La Pérouse. He made enquiries, and found that they came from nearby Vanikoro, where two big ships had broken up. Dillon managed to obtain a ship in Bengal, and sailed for Vanikoro where he found cannon balls, anchors and other evidence of the remains of ships in water between coral reefs. He brought several of these artifacts back to Europe, as did D'Urville in 1828. De Lesseps, the only member of the expedition still alive at the time, identified them, as all belonging to the Astrolabe. Both ships had been wrecked on the reefs, the Boussole first. The Astrolabe was unloaded and taken apart. A group of men, probably the survivors of the Boussole, were massacred by the local inhabitants. According to natives, surviving sailors built a two-masted craft from the wreckage of the Astrolabe, and left westward about 9 months later, but what happened to them is unknown. Also, two men, one a "chief" and the other his servant, had remained behind, surviving until 1823, three years before Dillon arrived.

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